


Visions Are Seldom All They Seem

by freudensteins_monster



Series: Dec Prompt Meme Collection [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Norse Religion & Lore, Angst, Child Death, Childhood Memories, Darcy is Angrboda Reborn, Developing Relationship, F/M, Past Lives, Past Relationship(s), Pregnancy, Reincarnation, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, viking funeral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 21:09:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9142306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudensteins_monster/pseuds/freudensteins_monster
Summary: Darcy is sick and tired of Loki staring at her and demands to know why. She's not sure she likes the answer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this fic mentions the death and Viking funeral of an infant. Nothing graphic at all but still, I wanted you to know before you decide to read this.
> 
> Based on a prompt meme thing I posted on tumblr... valiantlyangryfoxblr said:  
> Leave a “Remember Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about one character trying to get another to remember them [be it from an accident, meeting them after years apart, feel free to specify.] Darcy and Loki - Maybe with Darcy being reincarnated and Loki trying desperately to make her remember:):):) 
> 
> It's probably a lot more angsty that she was hoping for, but oh well...  
> And I know I would usually write Loki x Sigyn but I wanted to do something different and play with the mythology a bit. Let me know what you think. xoxox

“Jane, he’s doing it again,” Darcy whined.

“What now?” Jane muttered, not taking her eyes off her computer screen.

“Loki’s staring at me again,” the intern turned paid assistant hissed.

“Maybe you have food on your face, or something in your hair,” Jane offered absently.

“No, I do not, thank you very much. I checked already.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you, Darcy. Maybe he thinks you’re cute?”

Darcy scoffed. “Yeah, right. There’s no way that Mister “Cower foolish mortals” is thinking about me like that. He’s just doing it to freak me out.”

“And it’s not working, obviously.”

“Jane!”

“What Darcy?” the astrophysicist cried in frustration. “What do you want me to do? I’m trying to work here. And as far as I can tell Loki is still getting all his work done too, even if he is spending all day staring at you. How much work are you getting done, hmm?” she asked pointedly. Darcy had enough decency to look embarrassed. “So either ignore him and get back to work, or have it out with him and then – get back to work,” Jane demanded with more force than she usually bothered with, but Darcy’s bitching about Loki had increased exponentially since Thor had first dragged him to their labs to begin his penance and Jane had had enough. Loki was a nice enough guy, once you got past the attempt at world domination stuff, a bit standoffish and brusque, but his brain – ugh! Jane just wanted to pick at it all day long. And she knew Darcy didn’t hate him either. Jane had seen enough pictures of Darcy’s ex-boyfriends to know her assistant definitely had a type and her irritation was just an overreaction to the crush she had on the dark and brooding Norse god. A tiny part of her, the part that loved sappy endings in Hollywood rom-coms, was already planning their first double date.

(But Darcy did not like Loki, thank you very much. He was mean and rude, and he wasn’t even attractive! Who likes ridiculously tall guys, with stupid handsome faces with mesmerising green eyes and panty-dropping British accents? Nobody, that’s who!)

Darcy spun around her office chair, deliberating her next move, but when Loki’s eyes flicked up to meet hers he made the decision for her.

“What do you want?” Darcy barked as she barged into his lab.

“I don’t know what you mean. I did not call for you,” Loki drawled in bored tones.

“You know I mean, Loki. You’ve been staring at me”

“I have done no such thing, Miss Lewis.”

“Yes, you have. You stare at me all the goddamn time and it’s freaking me out. Stop it.” When Loki went to deny it again Darcy held up a finger to silence him. “I’m not crazy!” she said with all the vehemence of someone who had been called such before. “Just… stop it.” Darcy stormed out of his lab, slamming the door so hard the abundance of windows rattled.

Loki sighed wearily and turned back to his computer. He hadn’t meant to stare at her quite so much, and he certainly hadn’t intended to get caught doing it. He strengthened his resolve and managed not to stare at her, at least not when she was looking, for two whole weeks before everything went tits up.

 

It was a beautiful day, the first day of Spring, or so Miss Lewis had sung when she forcibly shut down the labs demanding everyone join her in the park for a picnic lunch. Thor, Jane, Darcy, and the few nameless lab assistants Jane had hired were having a great time, despite or because of the fact that Loki had sat apart from them. He had no desire to join in their mindless gossip, content to rest beneath a shady tree nursing a plastic cup of punch, tamping down on the urge to turn his head every time Darcy laughed. It was torture, but he had survived worse.

Movement in the grass beside him interrupted his brooding. Loki watched entranced as a small black and yellow snake hesitantly made its way out of the gardens behind him. It reminded him of the serpents he would conjure a lifetime ago, of pranks pulled, of celebrations ruined. He was so lost in his memories he almost didn’t hear the screaming. He rolled his eyes as the nameless female lab assistant shrieked and put as much distance as she could between herself and the tiny reptile. Loki was just about to scold her for her ridiculousness when Darcy beat him to it.

“Oh my God! Calm down, would you? It’s just a little garter snake,” Darcy remarked happily as she stepped over her startled co-workers (and a bemused Thor) to pick the creature up. “It’s okay, little guy,” she crooned, a finger stroking its shining scales. “Back into the garden where it’s safe,” she told him as she took a few steps into the greenery before setting the snake on the ground.

As she stepped back a plastic cup crumpled under her foot, its owner was already halfway out of the park.

 

Thor found Loki seated on the floor of his room, leaning back against his bed frame. When Loki didn’t immediately demand that Thor to leave him be the Asgardian took it as an indication to join him.

“What troubles you, brother?” he asked. “The Lady Darcy fears that her fondness for serpents has somehow upset you. I tried to assure you that you would have no issue with such a thing, but apparently it is not a common Midgardian trait and she worries you think her strange.”

“I do not,” Loki replied.

“Then what disquieting thoughts consume you?” Thor probed.

Loki thought about lying to him, it would be all too easy, but he had to tell someone before it drove him mad, and Thor was all he had.

“Angrboða,” Loki sighed.

“What about her?”

“Darcy is Angrboða reborn.”

“Are you sure?” Thor asked tentatively, knowing the subject of Loki past love to be a delicate one. “There is little resemblance between them.”

“I assure you, Thor, what Darcy lacks in height, she more than makes up for in spirit. She is Angrboða, I’m sure of it.”

Thor held his tongue. He knew Loki would not have come to such conclusions lightly, and would not have dared to share them with him unless he was absolutely certain.

“Angrboða always did love animals, as does Lady Darcy,” he mused as Loki nodded in agreement. “And Lady Darcy does have a fearsome temper, with a tongue as sharp as any sword.”

Loki snorted at that. “Do you still have the bump on your head from where Angrboða hit you with the skillet?”

“Aye,” he laughed, his hand straying to the back of his head. “Eir said it should serve as a reminder not to underestimate women. A lesson I failed to learn,” he admitted with a frown, recalling how Darcy had felled him with her lightning weapon when they first met. “Strange,” he murmured as he pondered the similarities.

“Proof,” Loki countered.

“Forgive me, brother. It is a lot to take in, but rest assured I trust your judgment in this. I’m sure it is not something you came to accept easily.”

“Indeed not.”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“Nothing,” Loki admitted sadly. “She is Angrboða reborn, not Angrboða herself. I will not burden Darcy with knowledge she is not meant to have.”

“There are tales… of lovers being reunited in their next lives,” Thor offered hesitantly.

Loki scoffed. “You forget, brother, I am yet to die. Not properly, at least. And do you honestly think our love was so great that the Norns would allow us to find each other again?”

“She was your first love,” Thor shrugged. “It can be a powerful thing.”

“Foolish thing, more like,” Loki muttered bitterly.

“But you loved her?”

Loki said nothing, but the answer was obvious.

“I will say nothing of this to Lady Darcy, but you should reconsider. She has already confronted you about the way you stare at her. Do you honestly think you can keep this from her?”

“I can try.”

 

Darcy noticed Loki’s absence from the labs right away, and the only reason she was given was that ‘Loki needed some space’. It was fine, really. It wasn’t like they were friends or anything. She didn’t miss him or think about him at all. Honest. But when he started to excuse himself from family dinners and Thor got that kicked puppy look, and Jane pouted the way she did when she couldn’t fix something, that’s when Darcy got mad. After a week of Loki freezing them out, and one too many glasses wines with dinner, Darcy decided banging on his bedroom door at midnight was a great course of action.

“What the hell is your problem?” she demanded, refusing to acknowledge his bare torso or the way his pyjama pants sat low on his hips.

“Excuse me?” he demanded back, his voice dripping with its patented ‘talking to you is beneath me’ vitriol.

“Why are you being so rude? You’re upsetting Thor, which is upsetting Jane. Basically everyone is sad because you don’t want to be a part of our family. But you are. You’re family. And you can’t just keep shutting us out, Lopt. It’s not fair! If you wanna keep working from your room, that’s fine, but you have to eat with us. We miss you.”

“What…”

“Don’t make me say it again,” Darcy blushed.

“No… what did you call me?” Loki stammered, what little colour he had draining from his face.

“I called you late for dinner, assbutt,” Darcy huffed, crossing her arms irritably.

“Lopt. You just call me Lopt.”

“What? No, I didn’t,” Darcy bristled.

“Darcy,” he implored. “Where did you hear that name?”

“I… I don’t know. Forget it,” Darcy grumbled, backing away down the hall.

“Angrboða,” Loki called, causing Darcy to freeze. “Do you know that name?”

“No,” Darcy automatically replied, but her shaky voice held no confidence.

“Darcy, please,” Loki begged. “Do you remember her?”

Darcy shook her head violently, clasping her hands around her head when that was deemed a mistake in her drunken state.

“Shut up! I don’t remember anything!” she shouted, disappearing into her own rooms.

“Shit...” Loki swore before returning to his own room.

 

Darcy had always been a strange child, or so her parents said when they thought she was out of earshot. As a baby she never cried, unless she was handed a doll and then she would wail and carry on until the toy was out of sight. As a toddler she would try and adopt all manner of creatures and when her parents found her curled up with a neighbours lost python at the age of six they put a permanent ban on any and all pets in the house. But it was at the age of ten after Darcy struck up a conversation with her grandfather’s neighbour in stilted Icelandic that her parents grew truly concerned. They asked her where she had learnt such words and little Darcy made the mistake of telling her parents about the dreams she’d been having, of the dark haired man and the woman with blueish skin, of wolves and snakes, and most horrifyingly of burning babies. They found her a psychiatrist the very next day and he prescribed frequent therapy sessions and anti-psychotics. Soon the dreams went away, as did most of her eccentricities, and Darcy’s parents finally had a normal little girl to dote on.

 

Loki didn’t sleep but was roused from his thoughts in the early hours of the morning by a sharp knock on his door. Darcy stood before him looking as though she had cried herself to sleep, if she had slept at all.

“I heard it in a dream,” Darcy admitted tearfully. “After I saw you on the news in Germany. There was a woman in my dream. She was tall and strong, and she had blueish skin and reddish hair. She called you Lopt. And an idiot.” Darcy fidgeted nervously, “Who was she?”

“Her name was Angrboða. She was my lover, hundreds of years ago now.”

“And why the hell would I be dreaming about her?”

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“Would it change anything if I said no?”

Loki shook his head sadly.

“So you think I’m her?”

“No, you are still yourself, I promise you that. You will always be Darcy Lewis. But once, a long time ago, you were Angrboða also.”

“Would you tell me about her?” Darcy asked nervously, hugging herself.

Loki smiled kindly and stepped back to allow Darcy into his bedroom, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as he led her to take a seat on his bed.

“Where to start…”

 

The Norse myths were, for the most part, full of shit. Loki had never birthed a horse, thank you very much, and the idiot that had started that rumour had suffered greatly. He had, in actual fact, saved the misshapen foal from being killed, and by Odin’s decree had taken on sole responsibility for Sleipnir’s care. Soon after Sleipnir had learned to take a saddle and bear a rider, Loki had decided to take him on a week long camping trip deep into the Asgardian forest. On the second day of their journeying they happened upon a dire wolf, monstrous in size despite its young age. Loki had been thrown from his mount and hit his head on a rock. When he awoke he was lying in a bed looking up at the strangest woman he had ever seen. Her skin was light blue, almost grey, and her dark wild hair glinted like fire in the light. She wore leather and furs and peered down at him with ice blue eyes.

“So it was a total Florence Nightingale deal?” Darcy interrupted.

“I don’t know what that means?”

“She healed your body and you healed her poor broken heart?” Darcy smirked.

“Something along those lines,” Loki admitted with a smile. “She said her name was Angrboða…”

She was something of a wildling, living alone in the depths of the forest. Her grandmother had been a Jotun, her grandfather a Vanir. Her poor half breed mother had borne a child to an Asgardian who had no intention of taking care of them, so she raised Angrboða as an outcast, just as she had been.

Her heritage didn’t bother Loki, as this was long before he knew of his own, instead he found it intriguing. And her independent way of life, to a young prince stifled by rules, was appealing. He visited her often, bringing her food and tools she couldn’t make for herself, things she was too proud or scared to go to the nearest village to buy. Sometimes he brought her books and helped her with her reading, sometimes she would share her mother’s spells and herbal potions with him, and slowly but surely they came to love each other.

They had no monstrous children. Fenrir was the dire wolf that had startled Sleipnir. Angrboða had found him separated from his pack after a storm and raised him as her glorified guard dog. Jörmungandr was a serpent she had saved from a flock of ravens. He had only been as large as the snake Darcy had held the day before but under Angrboða’s care (and with a little magical interference, Loki was sure) he grew so large he could encircle Angrboða’s entire hut.

“What about Hel? She was real, wasn’t she?” Darcy asked in a quiet voice, curling up next to Loki as he inhaled sharply.

“Yes… Yes, Hel was ours,” he replied tearfully. “We were scared at first, when Angrboða learnt she was pregnant. She had no family to help her and mine would not approve of the relationship, but as her belly grew we were so happy. We were married in secret by a Vanir priestess and we planned our life together, but…” Loki choked, unable to find the words, but Darcy remembered. She remember the fear and pain when the baby came into the world far too soon. She remembered the thunderous sound of horses hooves as Loki brought his mother and Eir to her bedside, escorted by a handful of guards, but it was too late; there was nothing left to do but build a funeral pyre. She remembered Angrboda howling in agony as the flames licked the tree canopy. That day haunted all who bore witness to it, just as it had haunted Darcy in her youth.

“I was devastated but focused on what I still had. I still had Angrboða,” Loki continued. “Odin was furious when he found out, of course, but we were bound and there was nothing he could do about it. I stayed by her side for months and thought her grief contained, but when I was called away to palace… she took her own life. She blamed her muddied ancestry for our daughter’s death, and once I learnt of my true parentage I blamed myself.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Darcy cried. “It was nobody’s fault.”

“I know,” Loki sighed, pulling Darcy close and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

They stay that way for several minutes, until Thor rose and began making a godawful ruckus in the kitchen.

“I’m not her,” Darcy whispered.

“I know,” Loki repeated.

“I think I like you,” Darcy admitted bashfully. “But I’m not sure if it’s because I really like you or just because she did.”

“I’m having the same problem, I’m afraid. I suggest we take this slow, until we can discern what is real and what is simply remembered. But for what it’s worth, I think I could grow this like Darcy Lewis, just as she is.”

“That’s a good start,” Darcy smiled as she sat up and wiped the tear tracks from her face. “Come on, we’re going out.”

“Are we now?” Loki asked with an amused smirk, already pulling on a t-shirt and jeans as Darcy ran her hands through her messy hair.

“Yup. We’ve had an emotional couple of hours and I’m heading for a hangover. We’re going to go out and get coffee, lots of coffee, and eat a really great breakfast.”

“And?” Loki queried as he saw Darcy’s mind wander.

“And then we’re getting a dog.”

“Are we now?” Loki laughed as Darcy ushered him out of the room.

“Yup,” she repeated. “A dog big enough to ride. Isn’t that right, Thor?” she called as they made their way past the kitchen.

“Of what are you speaking, Lady Darcy?” Thor asked, rightfully confused.

“Nothing,” Darcy replied in a singsong voice, taking Loki by the hand as they headed for the door.

Thor smirked at his brother but refrained from saying “I told you so.” Loki rolled his eyes and offered Thor an obscene Midgardians hand gesture in reply.


End file.
